The Current State of Islam and Muslims in the Czech Republic

Estimates suggest there are between 5,000 and 20,000 Muslims in the Czech Republic (as of November 2017), making up 0.2% of the population. However, recent hate crimes and rising Islamophobia have led many Muslims to leave the country.

After walking through the beautiful streets of Prague, just a few blocks from the famous Wenceslas Square, Raed Sheikh, a 38-year-old Muslim, stopped and pointed to a Muslim-owned grocery store where he and his friends shop. He then pointed to a Middle Eastern restaurant hidden behind a small mosque. “This is the highest concentration of Muslims in Prague,” the IT manager said jokingly.

Although there is no precise data, the Muslim community in the Czech Republic is small, numbering between 5,000 and 20,000 people, representing 0.2% of the country’s population. Only some live in Prague, but Islam has become a central topic in Czech politics.

For example, Czech-Japanese entrepreneur Tomio Okamura and his party, “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) — the third-largest party in the Czech Parliament — have no clear platform other than removing Islam from the Czech Republic. Their election slogan, “No to Islam, No to Terrorism,” convinced many voters, even though it was the party’s first time participating in elections. Since the “ANO – Action of Dissatisfied Citizens” party won the election but did not secure a majority, it is possible, at the time of writing, that SPD may join the government coalition.

Muslims are leaving the Czech Republic due to Islamophobia

Muslims in Prague fear the possible inclusion of the SPD party in government. “We must fight for what our ancestors built here,” said Andrej Babiš, expected to become prime minister, adding: “If there are more Muslims here than in Brussels, that’s their problem. I don’t want them here, and they won’t decide who gets to live here.”

This kind of increasingly hostile rhetoric toward immigrants has raised deep concern among members of Prague’s Muslim community. “Most Muslims here contribute to society — they are doctors, engineers, IT managers, etc. But there are political parties trying to alter our rights and eliminate Islam,” said Vladimir Sanka, one of the leaders of the Muslim community in Prague.

“Many of our friends have already left, and if Islamophobia isn’t the main reason, it’s certainly the second,” says Raed Sheikh, now a Muslim religious leader in the Czech Republic. He claims that Muslims in the Czech Republic are already limited in several basic rights — such as the right to establish schools, conduct marriages, hold religious ceremonies in public spaces, and more.

No One Can Ban Freedom of Religion

At the time (2017), negotiations were underway to form a new Czech government. Okamura had already stated that the ANO party committed to several points, including considering restrictions on granting asylum to Muslims and banning Islamic religious laws. According to him, his party would not join the government unless this commitment appeared in the coalition agreement. However, Lubomír Kopeček, a political scientist from Masaryk University in Brno, argued that such an agreement was unlikely and unenforceable.

His words were echoed by the head of the Czech Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, who stated: “No one can ban freedom of religion and belief.” Still, such a move would not be unprecedented in the region — last year, Slovakia passed a similar law preventing Islam from being recognized as an official religion in the country. Worse yet, anti-Islamic sentiments in the Czech Republic have escalated into hatred and actual attacks on Muslims.

In July, local media reported that two Muslim women were verbally and physically attacked in Prague. One of them was the wife of Raed Sheikh, who said, “The situation is getting worse.” An example of this is the increasing difficulty of celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the end-of-Ramadan holiday, in Prague. The reason is simple — large venues no longer want to associate with Muslims. “It wasn’t a problem for many years, but now it’s become almost impossible,” he says.

As in neighboring Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary, attitudes toward immigrants in the Czech Republic have hardened since 1995, due to terrorist attacks in Western Europe and the Syrian refugee crisis. Despite the small number of Muslims in the country, the Czech Republic has a history of nationalism — expressed, for example, in the prolonged persecution of Roma people. This history has led the country to adopt a populist and far-right stance — for instance, Czech President Miloš Zeman claimed that “Muslim integration into Czech society is impossible.”

According to a 2017 Harvard University study that examined hundreds of thousands of Europeans, Czechs displayed more racist attitudes than other European nations. In Prague, several politicians, including President Miloš Zeman, have adopted hardline positions toward Muslims — such as opposing EU refugee quotas and accepting only 12 of the 2,700 refugees allocated to them.

Czech rhetoric has paved the way for anti-Islam groups like “Block Against Islam.” Last year, they dressed in traditional Muslim attire and mocked the Hajj by marching around a toilet. In another event, a group dressed as ISIS invaded Prague’s Old Town Square and staged a mock beheading.

“These are small groups, but they want to provoke and stir reactions,” says Vladimir Sanka. In contrast, Raed Sheikh claims, “We don’t have much power to do anything in the Czech Republic, but we are in a very difficult situation.” According to him, hatred toward Muslims is visible on every corner, on every TV channel, and in every newspaper — making it easy to understand why Muslims in the Czech Republic are afraid.

This article was translated from Al Jazeera